That was generally taken to mean we should be investing in the share market, not the most attractive of options for those who remember 1987, or perhaps Lotto. Plonking our life savings on a horse has lost some if its appeal, given that the racing industry isn't what it used to be.
Soaring house prices make it unlikely that we are going to lose our enthusiasm for investing in real estate any time soon, however, and those who have a home, and maybe a rental as well, are going to take a great deal of persuading that they should not be relying on bricks and mortar for their future prosperity.
Of course those who are sitting on a fortune can only realise the gains from that investment when they sell, and presumably have to buy again in what we are told is a white-hot housing market, or when they die, in which case others will benefit. The government, if it wanted to, could simply decree that those who buy houses as investments cannot borrow to do so. That would cut a lot of them out of the market, much more effectively than any form of capital gains tax, or an extension of the bright line test, which we are told is very much in the government's thinking despite promises to the contrary before the election.
Meanwhile, the occasional voice in the wilderness suggests that those who are supposedly being deprived of their God-given right to own their own home reduce their expectations. Good advice, but increasingly unpalatable in a country where all manner of aspirations have gradually morphed into rights.
Those who wish to buy their first home in an inner Auckland suburb now have a right to do so, and if prices deprive them of that right then someone needs to restore it. The fact is that in much of this country, including outer Auckland, house prices are far from astronomical, and home ownership is far from unattainable. Most of those who want to buy a house in Mt Albert, Tauranga or Queenstown should resign themselves to the fact that they are going to have to start somewhere else. If they are intent on waiting for someone to enable them to start at the top, they will be waiting for a very long time.
The problem for those who grow fruit and veg, for us and for export, is much more immediate, and eminently solvable. While importing pickers might not be the ideal long-term solution, and plenty will argue that it is not, it could, even with Covid-19 restrictions, have been implemented months ago. That it hasn't been is largely attributable to the political view that these jobs should be filled by New Zealanders, those who have long been looking for paid work and those who have suddenly found themselves on the dole as a result of the pandemic.
There are a couple of problems with that, including the fact that the work might well not be within a reasonable commutable distance of those who need it. The pre-social welfare days when people, especially young men, were expected to travel as far as was necessary to take up whatever work might be going have long gone, and, regrettable as some might think that is, it hardly seems reasonable to expect people, especially those with dependent families, and their own homes, to uproot themselves to take up work that will only last a short time.
There is absolutely no doubt that some of those who rely upon social welfare for their income could be keener to take up whatever work is available than they seem to be, although a small story last week, to the effect that some fruit and vegetable growers in Central Otago have been overwhelmed with job applications, to the point where they were struggling to process them in a timely fashion, suggests that our infamous work shyness might be something of a myth.
Here again, however, there is one step that the government could take today to remove one of the major barriers that is deterring the unemployed from picking fruit and veg. Those who take up this work, knowing full well that it won't last long, will apparently be subject to the 13-week stand-down before they can return to a benefit once the last cherry is in the bag. Who, in their right mind, is going to relinquish the security of a benefit for a seasonal job, knowing that they will have no income at all for four months once the job finishes? And who is going to blame them for not doing so?
The government's demand that growers pay pickers a 'living wage' doesn't begin to address this issue, whereas making the temporary transition from welfare to work and back to welfare feasible might well do.
The welfare system has never offered any real encouragement for the unemployed to take up paid work, particularly in small communities where some employers struggle to match the incomes that welfare can provide to those without jobs, but one might have hoped for a more intelligent response to the desperate need for pickers in these extraordinary times. That disconnect wasn't invented by this government, but it isn't doing anything to fix it.
Dictating pay rates, over and above a minimum wage that is reportedly the second-highest in the OECD, and endlessly repeating the mantra that jobs in New Zealand should be filled by New Zealanders, isn't going to help growers whose livelihoods are disappearing before their very eyes, or the people who desperately need work.
This fruit and veg crisis is a government-manufactured one. It does not need to be a crisis at all, and wouldn't be if the government had our best interests at heart.
